A shooting last year that wounded 17-year-old Jordan Richardson Jr. was a wake-up call and one that opened the door for him to reclaim the potential his parents saw in him.

And it is an example of how the Chatham County Youth Intercept: a Violence Intervention Program at Memorial University Medical Center can help change lives of youth victimized by violence and in need of a mentoring program.

Richardson was shot once in the stomach on June 1, 2016, when a group of youths fired 10 gunshots into his car in what his father characterized as a “random-type shooting.” He ended up at Memorial, where he spent the next two weeks.

The family immediately got help with the medical bills through the Georgia Crime Victim Compensation Program, but just as importantly met John Bush, a community intervention specialist with Intercept who would serve as Richardson’s mentor and help him regain his future.

Through Bush and Sheryl Sams, program director, the younger Richardson was placed in Youth Challenge, a National Guard-run camp at Milledgeville, which he described as a boot camp experience of rigid schedules and educational programs.

He graduated in March, one of only 75 from the original 300 statewide.

“I did the best I could,” Richardson said. “I was there to complete my education. (Now) I am ahead and scheduled to graduate next spring.”

He will graduate early, be doing some college work, and recently started a job with a restaurant in downtown Savannah.

Bush, who has a yearlong commitment to assist Richardson, said the commitment component of the program is fluid.

“A year doesn’t end just because that commitment ends,” he said during a conversation in the program’s cramped office at Memorial’s Heart & Vascular Institute.

‘It’s just basically a follow-up process,” Sams added.

Bush said Richardson has “really come full circle” during his time in the program, including developing leadership skills with others in the program.

After graduation, Richardson said he plans to “head to the military, the Army” where he hopes to develop some skills for life.

DA Heap’s perspective

The program, which Chatham County District Attorney Meg Heap inherited from her predecessor, then expanded and renamed in 2014 at Memorial, made inroads at Candler Hospital beginning last September where it maintains an office.

Efforts are underway to include St. Joseph’s Hospital.

Heap has championed the program as a proven way to catch at-risk youth at the front end and steer them away from more violent futures including prison or death.

“If somebody doesn’t intercede we have seen time after time that they will either be re-victimized, i.e. shot, or they will retaliate, i.e. shoot somebody else,” she said. “It has been proven successful. We have to continue to find new initiatives like this to prevent kids, youths, from entering into a life of crime.”

The program targets victims of violent crime or exposure to those situations, from the ages of 12-25. There are currently 62 youths in the program.

Since 2010, 112 youth have participated in the program, some of them for more than a year. Last year, they responded to Memorial’s emergency room 234 times, said Cheryl Rogers, director of the DA’s Victim Witness Assistance Program.

For Rogers, the program is a way to work with victims and avert future problems in the criminal justice system.

“This is a way for us to reach out and work with (youth) in crime prevention,” she said, adding the program allows them to target kids through referrals from hospital emergency rooms, Juvenile Court and 11 local public schools.

Success helps family, too

Richardson’s success has not just pleased him but his parents as well.